PLAYING THE BLAME GAME IN NEW ORLEANS
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George Bush would rather not point fingers and play the blame game. His personal history would indicate that it would be something he hasn't always done well with. He and that horrible mother of his haven't hidden the fact that little George was a real no-goodnik until the supposed Road to Damascus Experience (when Laura found him in a drunken stupor for the umpteenth time, punched him in the face and told him she was kicking him out). Until then he was a spoiled brat with an overwhelming sense of entitlement, a severe and frustrating learning disability, and a predilection for facing life's little problems fortified with drugs and alcohol. In other words, Bush has always been a pathetic fuck-up. His hopes were that everyone would always just move on (and clean up his messes) without anyone (i.e.- him) getting the blame, having to take any kind of meaningful responsibility or ever being help accountable. But, when push comes to shove, Bush will gladly thrown anyone overboard to save his own sorry ass.
"Let's all stick together on this and not blame each other" was his first instinct as he and all the local politicians and officials (of both parties) started assessing the potential damage (to their careers and reputations). Once the media and public opinion started focussing on responsibility, accountability, blame, the GOP propaganda machine went into high gear trying to turn the tide of public disgust away from Bush and towards the (Democratic) mayor of New Orleans and governor of Louisiana. Polls still show a majority of Americans (approximately 60%) think the buck stops with the president. The NEW YORK TIMES ran a story by Scott Shane yesterday that tried to deal with sorting the mess out, "AFTER FAILURES, GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS PLAY BLAME GAME." Shane is cautious and cerebral-- you know it's the NY TIMES, not Kanye West-- but the conclusions don't look any better for Bush than Kanye's. A furious no-holds-barred spin game from the corridors of power is now in effect. If they could put that kind of energy into solving real problems in Louisiana and Mississippi, the nation would be in a lot better position to weather this mess. Shane's article:
WASHINGTON (Sept. 5) -- As the Bush administration tried to show a more forceful effort to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina, government officials on Sunday escalated their criticism and sniping over who was to blame for the problems plaguing the initial response.
While rescuers were still trying to reach people stranded by the floods, perhaps the only consensus among local, state and federal officials was that the system had failed.
Some federal officials said uncertainty over who was in charge had contributed to delays in providing aid and imposing order, and officials in Louisiana complained that Washington disaster officials had blocked some aid efforts.
Local and state resources were so weakened, said Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, that in the future federal authorities need to take "more of an upfront role earlier on, when we have these truly ultracatastrophes."
But furious state and local officials insisted that the real problem was that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which Mr. Chertoff's department oversees, failed to deliver urgently needed help and, through incomprehensible red tape, even thwarted others' efforts to help.
"We wanted soldiers, helicopters, food and water," said Denise Bottcher, press secretary for Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana. "They wanted to negotiate an organizational chart."
Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans expressed similar frustrations. "We're still fighting over authority," he told reporters on Saturday. "A bunch of people are the boss. The state and federal government are doing a two-step dance."
"Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans -- virtually a city that has been destroyed -- things are going relatively well."
-- FEMA Director Michael Brown in CNN interview Thursday, Sept. 1
"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."
-- President Bush praises Brown during visit to Alabama Friday
"We're angry, Mr. President, and we'll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry... Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.''
-- The Times-Picayune Sunday editorial
"Mr. President, Madame Governor, you two have to get in sync. If you don't get in sync, more people are going to die."
-- New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin recounts what he told President Bush and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco Friday.
"If one person criticizes them, or says one more thing, including the president of the United States, he will hear from me. One more word about it... and I -- I might likely have to punch him."
-- Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., on ABC's 'This Week' defends sheriff's department.
"They've had press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences. For God's sakes, shut up and send us somebody."
-- Aaron Broussard Jefferson Parish president pleads for help on NBC's 'Meet the Press' Sunday.
In one of several such appeals, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, called on President Bush on Sunday to appoint an independent national commission to examine the relief effort. She also said that she intends to introduce legislation to remove FEMA from the Department of Homeland Security and restore its previous status as an independent agency with cabinet-level status.
Mr. Chertoff tried to deflect the criticism of his department and FEMA by saying there would be time later to decide what went wrong.
"Whatever the criticisms and the after-action report may be about what was right and what was wrong looking back, what would be a horrible tragedy would be to distract ourselves from avoiding further problems because we're spending time talking about problems that have already occurred," he told Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" on NBC.
But local officials, who still feel overwhelmed by the continuing tragedy, demanded accountability and as well as action.
"Why did it happen? Who needs to be fired?" asked Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, south of New Orleans.
Far from deferring to state or local officials, FEMA asserted its authority and made things worse, Mr. Broussard complained on "Meet the Press."
When Wal-Mart sent three trailer trucks loaded with water, FEMA officials turned them away, he said. Agency workers prevented the Coast Guard from delivering 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel, and on Saturday they cut the parish's emergency communications line, leading the sheriff to restore it and post armed guards to protect it from FEMA, Mr. Broussard said.
One sign of the continuing battle over who was in charge was Governor Blanco's refusal to sign an agreement proposed by the White House to share control of National Guard forces with the federal authorities.
Under the White House plan, Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré would oversee both the National Guard and the active duty federal troops, reporting jointly to the president and Ms. Blanco.
"She would lose control when she had been in control from the very beginning," said Ms. Bottcher, the governor's press secretary.
Ms. Bottcher was one of several officials yesterday who said she believed FEMA had interfered with the delivery of aid, including offers from the mayor of Chicago, Richard M. Daley, and the governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson.
Adam Sharp, a spokesman for Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, said the problem was not who was in command. FEMA repeatedly held up assistance that could have been critical, he said.
"FEMA has just been very slow to make these decisions," Mr. Sharp said.
In a clear slap at Mr. Chertoff and the FEMA director, Michael D. Brown, Governor Blanco announced Saturday that she had hired James Lee Witt, the director of FEMA during the Clinton administration, to advise her on the recovery.
Nearly every emergency worker told agonizing stories of communications failures, some of them most likely fatal to victims. Police officers called Senator Landrieu's Washington office because they could not reach commanders on the ground in New Orleans, Mr. Sharp said.
Dr. Ross Judice, chief medical officer for a large ambulance company, recounted how on Tuesday, unable to find out when helicopters would land to pick up critically ill patients at the Superdome, he walked outside and discovered that two helicopters, donated by an oil services company, had been waiting in the parking lot.
Louisiana and New Orleans have received a total of about $750 million in federal emergency and terrorism preparedness grants in the last four years, Homeland Security Department officials said.
Mr. Chertoff said he recognized that the local government's capacity to respond to the disaster was severely compromised by the hurricane and flood.
"What happened here was that essentially, the demolishment of that state and local infrastructure, and I think that really caused the cascading series of breakdowns," he said.
But Mayor Nagin said the root of the breakdown was the failure of the federal government to deliver relief supplies and personnel quickly.
"They kept promising and saying things would happen," he said. "I was getting excited and telling people that. They kept making promises and promises."
posted by DownWithTyranny @ 8:38 AM
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My friend Seymour just called from Paris. True, he was getting a little soused for his transatlantic flight but the conversation still struck me as odd (as Seymour, if you don't know him, is generally a pretty odd guy-- and not really trying to hide it anymore). Anyway, he wanted to warn me to stop blaming Bush for the consequences of Hurricane Katrina. He started raving about subjects best not discussed in polite company. Almost immediately after I wished him a bon voyage, good luck in renewing his membership in the Mile High Club, and hanging up, I got an e-mail from a far more sober friend, Rosemary, who forwarded me a blog piece she got from James Wolcott, NEW ORLEANS DIED FOR BUSH'S SINS. Although not a perfect antidote to Seymour's ranting, it does answer something that quite a few nervous Democrats are saying today:
Over at DailyKos, Armando is cautioning liberal lefties to holster the
fickle fingers of blame.
"This is not a time for politics -- not only for moral and ethical
reasons, but for political ones as well. That is, politics itself
mandates that these days not be political."
Stop right there. First of all, "politics" mandates nothing. It's an
abstract noun. It's like beginning a sentence "Morality dictates
that..." Morality dictates nothing. It's how people interpret morality,
and how they apply it in certain situations which evolve over time.
Politics are people, and what they make of their political situation,
and when the realities of their lives demand that the political and
economic circumstances of their lives change. It isn't something to put
on a shelf and used only when the climate of opinion permits.
Armando again: "Yes Bush and his administration have much to answer for.
But what of the government of the State of Louisiana? The government of
the City of New Orleans? I for one believe all have to answer for this.
But not now.
Maybe next week. But not today."
I don't mean to pick on Armando, but has he learned nothing under Bush?
There is no "next week" when it comes to getting answers and fixing
accountability for failure under this president. Next week never comes.
Look at 9/11. There were tough questions about the breakdown of
communications at Ground Zero, the lateness in scrambling fighter jets
once the hijacked planes were heading toward NY and DC, Bush's strange
behavior on that day, etc., and in the aftermath those questions were
considered inappropriate, "divisive." We needed to grieve first, heal;
and then the tough questions could be raised.
But they weren't. As months passed, the focus was on overthrowing the
Taliban and avenging 9/11, and tough questions were taken off the table
as the drumbeat was about the Nation Moving Forward. The media fell into
zombie lockstep behind the invigorated Bush agenda. It took the 9/11
widows and esp the "Jersey Girls" to push and shame the Congress, the
media, and the administration into launching a proper investigation,
otherwise it would have all slid into the memory hole apart from the
iconic images of the smoking towers before their collapse.
No, this is the time for politics, none better, because I can tell you
just from being out of NY a few days that a lot of people in this
country are shocked and sobered by New Orleans, but they're also worried
and pissed off. They're making the connection between the money,
manpower, and resources expended in Iraq and how raggedy-ass the rescue
effort has been in the Gulf. If you don't say it now when people's
nerves are raw and they're paying full attention, it'll be too late once
the waters receded and the media-emoting "healing process"
begins.
On the subject of George W. Bush and "the blame game":
Apart from a-drinkin' and a-struttin' and a-ridin' that thar golf cart on his make-believe ranch (and mebbe a-fallin' off'n his mountain bike), the blame game is just about George W.'s favoritest game. And it's one of the things that makes his union with Karl Rove a marriage made in heaven (or wherever it is that they arrange such couplings). For George W., nothing in life seems to come more easily or more automatically than blaming somebody else for his screw-ups, and nobody knows how to carry it out better than our Karl.
Of course anytime Tiny George burbles something about this not being the time for laying blame, you know he's in high let's-blame-somebody-else-ANYBODY-else mode. Because every time he screws up, which is every second of his miserable life, his automatic response is--and by all accounts always has been--to blame somebody else. Remember when he was asked to name one thing he'd done wrong in his first term, and couldn't come up with any thing, even though anybody who'd been conscious during that time and started answering when the question was asked would STILL be answering, counting only the "highlights."
We are still waiting for "The Dog Ate My PDB" George to take responsibility for one damned thing he's done in an existence that has consisted of nothing but one monumental fuck-up after another.
K
Washing Away the Conservative Movement
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Tuesday 06 September 2005
The responsibility of ministers for the public safety is absolute, and requires no mandate. It is in fact the prime object for which governments come into existence.
-- Winston Churchill
Somewhere, at this moment, a neoconservative is seething.
It isn't fair, he rages within. We had it wired. The House is ours, the Senate is ours, the Supreme Court is ours, the Justice Department is ours, the television news media is bought and paid for. We could act with impunity, say whatever we needed to say to get what we want, do whatever wanted, and no one could touch us. We could refashion the nation as we saw fit, whether people wanted to come along with us or not, because we know better.
We followed Leo Strauss's edicts to the letter, growls the seething neoconservative. Strauss, our neoconservative godfather, told us that this nation is best run by an elite that does not have to bother with the will or desires of the populace. Strauss told us we didn't even have to bother with the truth while pursuing our agenda. We are the elite, and we know best.
Somewhere, at this moment, a neoconservative is seething because his entire belief structure regarding government has been laid waste by a storm of singular ferocity. Hurricane Katrina has destroyed lives, ravaged a city, damaged our all-important petroleum infrastructure, and left every American with scenes of chaos and horror seared forever into their minds. Simultaneously, Hurricane Katrina has annihilated the fundamental underpinnings of conservative governmental philosophy.
What we are seeing in New Orleans is the end result of what can be best described as extended Reaganomics. Small government, budget cuts across the board, tax cuts meant to financially strangle the ability of federal agencies to function, the diversion of billions of what is left in the budget into military spending: This has been the aim and desire of the conservative movement for decades now, and they have been largely successful in their efforts.
Combine this with a wildly expensive and unnecessary war, rampant cronyism that replaces professionals with unqualified hacks at nearly every level of government, and the basic neoconservative/Straussian premise that the truth is not important and that the so-called elite know best, and you have this catastrophe laid out on a platter. The conservative and neoconservative plan for the way this country should be run has been blasted to matchsticks, their choice of priorities exposed as lacking, to say the very least.
The Katrina disaster in a nutshell: A storm that had been listed for years as #3 on America's list of "Worst Possible Things That Could Happen" arrives in New Orleans to find levees unprepared because massive budget cuts stripped away any ability to repair and augment them. The storm finds FEMA, the national agency tasked to deal with the aftermath of natural disasters, run by Bush friend Michael Brown, a guy who got fired from his last job representing the rights of Arabian horse owners. The storm finds a goodly chunk of the Louisiana National Guard sitting in a desert 7,000 miles away with their high-water Humvees parked beside them. The storm finds that our institutional decades-old unwillingness to address poverty issues left tens of thousands of people unable to get out of the way of the ram.
Grover Norquist, one of the ideological leaders of our current administration, once said he wanted to shrink the federal government until it was small enough to be drowned in a bathtub. Well, those who believe in his view of things have worked very hard to accomplish this, and we see now what happens when you do that. In this case, the government did not drown. An American city did.
Early estimates of the costs to repair the damage to New Orleans are rolling above $100 billion. The invasion and occupation of Iraq has cost many times more than that. The gigantic tax cuts of a few years ago further denuded the federal budget. Conservative and neoconservative dogma required this, and has left us singularly vulnerable. They have always wanted a weakened federal government, and now we have one, and a lot of people are dead because of it. The cost of this storm, plus the cost of the tax cuts, plus the cost of the Iraq war, plus the long-term damage to our economy caused by high gasoline prices, is going to kick the guts out of our government for a very long time to come.
In so many ultimately dangerous ways, their exposure is complete. For the last four years, we have been inundated with the claim that only Bush and the neocons can protect us from terrorism. The justification and shield for every action taken, no matter how absurd, has been that it is for our own good and defense. That's all dust now. "This is the Law and Order and Terror government," writes MSNBC newsman Keith Olbermann in his blog. "It promised protection - or at least amelioration - against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological. It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water."
Above and beyond the fact that the levees have broken all around the governmental philosophies of the conservative/neoconservative crew is the question of whether this could have been avoided with a little bit of personal responsibility. There is a lot of finger-pointing going on at the highest levels right now; at one point over the weekend, Bush defenders absurdly attempted to blame the Mayor of New Orleans for what happened. One boggles when trying to determine how the mayor of one city bears the responsibility for the damage and lack of rescue response that took place in Mississippi, Alabama and outside the realm of his parishes. This was a nicely Straussian twist on the truth, straight out of the playbook.
Could it have been avoided? Let's ask the National Weather Service, which sent out this alert on Sunday, August 28th: "A hurricane warning is in effect for the north central gulf coast from Morgan City, Louisiana, eastward to the Alabama/Florida border, including the city of New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain. Maximum sustained winds are near 160 mph with higher gusts. Katrina is a large hurricane. Coastal storm surge flooding of 18 to 22 feet above normal tide levels, locally as high as 28 feet, along with large and dangerous battering waves, can be expected near and to the east of where the center makes landfall. Some levees in the greater New Orleans area could be overtopped."
"Some levees in the greater New Orleans area could be overtopped." That was Sunday. Monday passed, and then Tuesday, and then Wednesday, and then Thursday, and then Friday, and then the weekend came, before any action of any significance whatsoever was taken to protect the lives of the citizens of that city.
Also on Sunday the 28th, Governor Blanco of Louisiana dispatched a letter to Bush formally requesting help for the horror she saw rolling towards her state over the southern horizon. "Under the provisions of Section 401 of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, 42 USC. 5121-5206 (Stafford Act), and implemented by 44 CFR 206.36, I request that you declare an expedited major disaster for the state of Louisiana as Hurricane Katrina, a Category V hurricane approaches our coast south of New Orleans; beginning on August 28, 2005 and continuing," read the letter. She went on in great detail over four full pages to list a series of requests that, had they been granted, would have spared thousands of people from death.
She was flatly ignored. Forget the fact that a hurricane hitting New Orleans has been on the danger list for decades. The Bush folks got the word on Sunday, not once but twice, and instead of swinging into action, they literally ate cake.
Have they learned anything from this? Hardly. The most important bit on this week's conservative agenda, beyond stuffing Mr. Roberts into the Chief Justice chair, is to repeal the estate tax. Yes, that's correct, before we do anything else, we have to make sure the rich of this nation get an even larger slice of the pie. This caused DNC Chairman Howard Dean to launch a singularly pointed salvo over the weekend.
"Countless thousands of our fellow Americans throughout the Gulf Coast region continue to suffer in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina," said Dean. "While some have begun the painful task of rebuilding their lives and coping with the unfathomable loss, so many still await help. And the cost of this disaster in human and material terms remains unknown. It's simply irresponsible for Senator Frist and Ken Mehlman to even think about spending our tax dollars on breaks for millionaires at a time when our top priority must be to ensure we have the resources needed to address the long and short term costs associated with rescue, recovery, and rebuilding in the wake of hurricane Katrina. Not to mention the vital lesson we learned this week about the deadly cost of diverting funds at the expense of the safety of the American people. These costs, continued Dean, "also come at a time when our nation faces a massive deficit, and mounting costs in the ongoing war in Iraq."
It isn't irresponsible, Chairman. It's standard operating procedure. They've been doing it like this for so long that they've forgotten how to do it any other way. They are such true believers that they cannot fathom doing it any other way. Likely, they will get away with it, and the loss of estate tax revenues will further damage our nation's ability to care for its own.
The house of cards has fallen in. A generation of conservative thinking, combined with five years of neoconservative thrashing, has finally come to an unavoidable head. The agencies tasked to protect us - FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security to name two - have been proven to be utterly useless. The heads of these agencies - Chertoff and Brown - are the perfect avatars of Bush's way of doing business, insofar as they have no business being in the positions they are in. The conservative movement has failed spherically, from all sides and in all directions.
So here's a thought: Let's repudiate these fools. When the basic software for the operating system of a computer is proven to be riddled with bugs and bad code, it is time to rewrite the whole thing. We have to do that here, with our government and institutions, and we have to do it now. Throw conservative dogma into the dustbin of history where it belongs.
Remember that a massive, highly industrialized and infrastructured, diverse nation requires an effective central government, funded properly and staffed by professionals and patriots, in order to keep the wheels on the road. Remember the words of that great Republican, Oliver Wendell Holmes, who said, "Taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society." What we are seeing in New Orleans is not civilized society, but anarchy. The reasons for this are as clear as the nose on your face.
They have failed us. Many people are dead because of it. It's time to change the software. Enough of this Boo Radley leadership.
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